Birthdays are cool, once you get past that number ticking up vibe.
For me birthdays are always about the people – how can i get to spend as much time with as many people who i really love as is humanly possible. Which is why i used to always drag mine out to a week – have as many different occasions for different friends from different spaces to congregate.
But they are also about the words. Yes, we could get all sciency and say birthdays are a false construct. To some extent. If we think about it long and hard enough it really is quite a weird thing to celebrate cos actually it’s the thing that happened nine months before the thing that was responsible but who wants to celebrate your parents having sex? Not me.
But back to the words cos birthdays are occasions when some people say some really nice things about you which is always encouraging. Especially when you have chosen to use your social media spaces as platforms to tackle race and poverty and injustice and faith issue which often lead to some people saying some less-than-nice things about you, which although you know they are not true, can sometimes start to ooze through the cracks. So the good words remind you that there is some hope and life in what you do and who you are.
Received some really amazing voice notes on my birthday from people i really have so much love for and it seems is reciprocated [yay me!] and some really amazing paragraphs on social media and in the inbox to really encourage me and make me feel well and truly loved.
The very best words
Among all the words that were spoken to me on my birthday, one particular sentence stands out:
We decided to continue last year’s tradition of doing a Birthday Twin joint party with my friend Mahlatse Mashua and his family and a bunch of our mutual friends and so we picked out a spot in Wynberg Park.
A little while into the party two of my friends [who happen to be coloured] arrived and we asked them if they had trouble finding us. Their response was something along the lines of this:
We saw this one group that we thought might be the party, but then we saw that they were all white and we thought, ‘No, Brett would not have an all-white party!’
Sho, guys. Heart smashed.
But also, the more sinister truth is that i did have an all-white party. Five years ago when i turned 40, straight after we had come home from three years living in America, the people we gathered to celebrate with us were, as far as i can remember, all white.
It was in America that my conscience was seared in terms of being gripped by the story of #BlackLivesMatters and individual stories like Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner and others. My journey towards intentional consciousness really began then.
To some extent an all-white 40th party was okay [not really] because it spoke to my life before America [not that i was not friends with black, coloured and indian people, but more that none of them had been invited into my inner circle] but an all-white party at 45 [after five years of trying to listen and learn and read and engage] would have been a tragedy [yes, in the bigger picture it is a tragedy that my 40th was all-white, i am not excusing that].
It is easier when your birthday twin is a black man to not have a joint birthday party that is not all-white, but i can say with confidence that if it had just been my birthday that we would have had a diverse crowd there.
This is not to pat me on the back in any way, but to speak of intention. i have attended two birthday parties in the last year [with guys who i would deem to be quite conscious when it comes to matters of race] that were both 100% white in terms of attendance. My hope with both of those guys is that as early as next year that will not be the case. And hopefully never again.
But having the look of diversity is not enough!
Here are some things tbV have done and are doing to increase the inclusivity of black, coloured and indian friends in our lives.
# We actively choose to read – for the most part – people who do not look like us [Currently busy with Martin Luther King, Jr.]
# We are intentional about who we invite to sit and eat with us at our dinner table [and compete at our board games table!]
# We have named and are actively seeking out mentorship from people who do not look like us [in age and colour]
# i am part of a faith community that is diverse, both in congregation but also in leadership
There may be more, but those are what come to mind right now.
[And i’m not sure if this is relevant at all, but none of those things above feel like work or effort or sacrifice for us.]
Diversity and inclusion and collaborative community are all values that we both hold deeply and so this stuff happens quite naturally, although we had to be more intentional in the early days. If something has not happened naturally in your life [see 40th birthday party!] then you have to do something different to bring about change.
If you are someone who is complaining about the state of this country and have not made any effort to sit alongside black, coloured and indian people and hear their stories, learn from their histories or join in their celebrations and step into their pain, then you need to be quiet for a bit and work on your connections. The rest will very likely start to take care of itself.
A very happy birthday to me. [And a very dominant boulle partner in Malibongwe who helped smash any opposition that came across our path!]
Leave a Reply